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The West should stop dithering and show its support for the protesters in Iran

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University students run from stones thrown by police during an anti-government protest on Dec. 30 inside Tehran University in Iran. (AP)

By Natan Sharansky

January 3, 2018

Natan Sharansky served nine years as a prisoner in Soviet Gulag for his human rights activities. He is Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

In recent days, Iranian citizens from various places and diverse walks of life have taken to the streets in protest against their clerical rulers. Outside of Iran, meanwhile, we have seen experts in the world’s most powerful capitals insisting that their leaders should not get involved. The usual argument is that external support for the protesters will only harm their cause by tainting it with endorsement from the West.

As an opinion piece in the New York Times recently put it, the best way for the U.S. government to help the Iranian protesters is to “Keep quiet and do nothing.”

Fortunately, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have already shown themselves unwilling to follow this advice. Even so, it is vital to understand why failing to support the protesters at this critical juncture would constitute a moral and strategic mistake — one of potentially historic proportions.

Consider what happened in 2009, when Iranians came out in large numbers to denounce their country’s rigged presidential election. The response they received from the American government was decidedly tepid. The priority of then-President Barack Obama was to reach an agreement with Tehran over its nuclear program, and he and his advisers feared that they would alienate the regime by vocally supporting its detractors.

Yet subsequent events have proved these views completely wrong. This policy of non-interference discouraged protesters and reinforced the regime at the very moment when the opposite could have led to genuine change.

My experiences as a political prisoner and my decades of involvement with democratic dissidents around the world have shown me that all democratic revolutions have some elements in common. It is the drive of ordinary citizens to free themselves from government control over their thought, speech and livelihoods — to shed the burden of having to conform in public despite their private misgivings and grievances against the regime — that has propelled dissidents and revolutionary movements around the world, from Communist Russia to the Arab Spring to today’s Islamic Republic of Iran.

Any regime that refuses to respect its citizens’ most basic rights, and especially the right to think and speak freely, can maintain its power only by intimidation and force. While some true believers may genuinely accept these official dogmas, others — I call them “double-thinkers” — question their government but are too afraid of retribution to publicly speak out against it. For these people, fear of the harsh consequences of dissent makes all the difference between silent critique and open protest.

Dissidents know the penalties of speaking out but are compelled more by the desire for freedom than by fear. They are willing to brave the consequences, including the loss of their livelihoods, physical freedom and even their lives, to gain the liberty to speak their minds. Revolutions take place when enough people simultaneously cross that fateful line between silent questioning and open dissent, between cowering in fear and standing up for freedom. Once they do so, the regime can no longer contain the upsurge of opposition and must either begin to liberalize or collapse.

This is why a policy of silence on the part of world leaders is so misguided. What matters to Iranians debating whether to cross this decisive threshold is how much they dislike their own government, as well as their knowledge that the free world — those who share the basic principles for which they are fighting — stands behind them in their moment of truth.

The last time Iran stood on the brink of such a change, the Obama administration’s policy implicitly told Iranians that the United States did not stand behind them. By assuring Iran’s rulers that he preferred the status quo to any policy that would weaken or destabilize the regime, the president took the wind out of the protesters’ sails and gave courage to their oppressors. What could have been a moment of genuine liberalization gave way instead to another brutal government crackdown.

Now that history is repeating itself, the free world has a chance to avoid making the same mistake. Our leaders must not be misled by the argument that publicly siding with Iran’s dissidents will give the regime an excuse to blame the protests on foreign meddling or crack down even harder on dissidents. The government in Tehran will do these things no matter what, since a regime as threatened as Iran’s is right now will take any steps in its power to deflect and suppress opposition.

Yet, world powers should go even further than this. They should warn Tehran — and thereby reassure protesters — that it must respect its citizens’ rights if it wishes to continue receiving benefits from their countries. Articulating a clear policy of linkage would put pressure on the regime to make genuine changes and give hope to protesters that their sacrifices will not be in vain.

It is time for all those who value freedom to state clearly that the Iranian people — like all people — deserve to be free, and that when they fight for this right, those of us who already enjoy it will stand unequivocally by their side.

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